Nosce Te Ipsum
by rannadylin
Summary: Fenris struggles to remember who he was before the lyrium ritual. That first night with Hawke is too much, but little by little the memories start to return after that.


It has plagued him as long as he can remember, the question that can never be answered. He has accepted answers which he knows cannot be the whole truth, settled for an identity forged in servitude, yet behind a wall of lyrium-light lie memories he would kill to reclaim.

 _Little Wolf, who are you really?_

In time he understands that it is a pet name, a slave name, but first, it is the only name he knows. Born anew, the pain all his own with no mother laboring for him to see the light of day this time, as the last of the lyrium-lines is fused to his skin he hears his master call him _Fenris, my little wolf,_ and as this is the first thing he ever hears, the first memory, this is who he becomes. Years later, he dares to listen at doors, trembling lest this breach of his master's will be discovered, but if he ever had another name and if his master ever knew it, it has long since been abandoned. Danarius tells him nothing of his past, nothing of the boy without the lyrium.

There is a gala at a rival's mansion; Danarius attends with his bodyguard. Mirrors along the walls make the ballroom look grander than it should, infinite. Fenris stares when he catches sight of himself, surprised at the markings mirrored back at him. He bears the punishment for his inattention later that night, after Danarius notes him lagging behind, but that moment of imagining what he might have looked like once, skin unmarked by any trace of magic, is worth it.

Still, his imagination is not an answer to the question. _Who am I? Who_ was _I?_

More than a trained dog, he learns, when he obeys his master on Seheron and it breaks his heart along with his chains. Since the first day he bore his markings, he has known only one kind of freedom: that of the magisters who command, who are always obeyed. Their will is done because others are bound to do it. But the Fog Warriors: _they_ did what _they_ would. Independence is a freedom he has never fathomed. Among them, he began to discover who Fenris was, himself, apart from his master's will. Had he only learned to know himself _enough_ , had he breached the lyrium wall behind which his unmarked memories lie, would his briefly loved comrades not lie dead at his feet?

In his first years on his own, he is so busy running _from_ Danarius that he rarely thinks to run _toward_ the answers long sought, but little by little he begins to know himself. _I am not a slave. But then, what am I?_ A fugitive. A fighter. A man consumed by hate for those who made him all that he is, who stole from him whatever past remains locked away.

But _a free man_. He tries, at least, to know himself as such. Yet in the midst of the running, the fighting to keep his tenuous freedom, he finds little else to define himself.

And then, there is Hawke.

* * *

The wall is breached, lost in her touch. It was, he discovers in one panicked moment while she sleeps in his arms, a dam holding back a flood of memories, too many to take in all at once, and he flees in the face of _who he was._

Ironic: after years of trying to break through to even the least of those memories, one brief glimpse of their magnitude unmakes him.

He was just beginning to know himself as Fenris, after all. The name might stay, as sweet as it sounded on Hawke's tongue, no longer a token of servility but of esteem. He was still a fugitive, a fighter, consumed by hate, yet as he followed Hawke these three years he had discovered other things that defined him:

 _I'm strong: strong enough to defend a friend from harm. I'm smart: smart enough to be heeded when I contribute to our plans, or even just to a conversation with a beautiful woman. Hawke calls me handsome; she likes listening to me talk. I am_ myself _, I am more than my master's will. I am a man, not a wolf._

He was just beginning to find something to like in what he knew about himself. And then Hawke pierced his walls with her gentle touch. For a moment, he was face to face with his _other_ self, the one so long sought in vain. Family: he had wondered so long _whom_ he came from, and there were faces, names, even _his own_ name, one he bore before Danarius remade him and renamed him. He wants desperately to know himself, this self called -

It's gone again.

It is too much, this teasing glimpse of memory, flash-flooding the confidence so carefully cultivated in his years on his own, now reinforced in Hawke's regard.

* * *

He avoids her at first, realizing upon reflection that running out as he did has hurt her. He pines for his newly forgotten memories and tries not to pine for _her_ , telling himself he has spoiled the chance at his new self's happiness.

But she's patient, and also too stubborn to leave him to wallow. It's not long before he follows her again, grateful but subdued, awkward but devoted. His fingers often toy with her crest at his belt, her ribbon around his wrist, and he wonders just what he saw that night, behind the lyrium wall, before it was shut up and hidden from him again.

 _You have a sister._

Hadriana's words haunt him. How could he have forgotten such a thing? Perhaps the mage lied. But perhaps she is there, his sister, locked again behind the wall. He writes letters, makes inquiries, searching rationally for a phantom in the waking world, but in his own mind he returns again and again to the wall, behind which such a sister surely lies.

Whatever he saw of her that night, if she exists, it does not return.

But as he presses his mind's fingers to the lyrium wall, seeking out chinks, wishing it were as simple to shove a hand through this barrier as through an enemy's flesh, other things begin to break through. There are flashes, smaller and slower and far from the overwhelming torrent of knowledge that frightened him away from Hawke in the first place. This, he can bear. These, he remembers, and catches each feeble memory and stores it up in a hoard of self-knowledge:

 _Bananas._ He remembers the plants with their broad leaves towering over his head, shelter from the sun and humidity of Seheron. There were bananas when he was fleeing Seheron as Fenris, but he doesn't remember the plants seeming quite so _tall_ , nor the miles and miles of them in neat rows to the horizon. A plantation? If it's true he was born on that island, is this a memory from his childhood there? A little girl's giggle chases him down the leafy rows, until the memory breaks on a woman's voice calling -

Calling names he _still_ can't recall.

* * *

"What's the matter, Fenris?" Hawke's voice startles him out of reverie. "You don't care for anise?"

"It is...fine," he stutters after a moment through the taste of honey and spices and, yes, anise, thick on his tongue. "In fact, it's quite good. My compliments to Orana."

"She does know some fine recipes," Hawke smiles. But Fenris takes another taste of Orana's little cakes and tries to pin down the memory. He's _certain_ he's never eaten sweets of this sort before; anise is not a taste one forgets. And it's not a spice a magister's cook wastes on slaves' portions. He can't even recall eating any sort of such frivolous treats while in Danarius' service.

The honey tastes of a voice far-off. _There now, my darling, something special for your name-day. Oh, you like that, do you? I'd make it oftener, but…_ He remembers: she had convinced Lysander, the cook, to slip her a pinch of the anise and other spices in exchange for mending she'd done. She'd sighed about how many years it had been since she had anise to cook with, _not since Seheron,_ and he'd thrown his thin arms around his mother and kissed her and made her laugh at the honey he left smeared on her cheek. She'd managed to find anise every year after that for his name-day cakes. _He remembers._

Haltingly, he asks Hawke if Orana might share her recipe. "What, Fenris, do you cook now?" she smiles. "From the state of your kitchen I'm not sure I believe it."

"No, I only wish…" he sighs. "Never mind."

Hawke shows up at his door the next day with a tray of the sweets and her kind smile. Old memories blur with newer ones as they eat and talk, laughing over sticky fingers. He says nothing of how he hears his mother's voice when he tastes the cakes so like hers.

* * *

Hawke's mabari is a noble breed and as familiar an ally after all these years as any of her companions, but _this time_ something in the dog's bark sends him back:

 _Paws, claws, teeth, an animal larger than the child himself, but he stands in the dog's way, defending himself, defending - whom? -_ someone _behind him, trembling as the creature growls and advances, menacing -_

"Tiberius!" Hawke calls to the dog. "Come on, Tibby, leave him be."

Fenris returns to his present self, surprised to find himself shaken, frozen as Hawke's big dog slinks away, distressed at being scolded for so enthusiastically greeting his elf friend.

"I'm sorry," she says, wringing her hands, stepping forward as though to touch him, but - he has avoided her touch since that night, and she does not press him. "He knows better than to jump on you."

"He...didn't," Fenris says, frowning as he separates the child's memory from today's incident. Tiberius is an exceptionally well-behaved dog, who has greeted Fenris a hundred times with paws on his shoulders and a lick to his nose that Fenris only pretends to abhor. The mabari's uncomplicated, unhesitant, unconditional affection has always made him feel welcome, no matter how awkward seeing Hawke has become. Fenris can't remember ever being afraid of dogs, nor attacked by one.

Until suddenly he _can_ remember it.

* * *

His letters bear fruit. There _is_ a sister, and she is not a slave but is _free_ to come to him.

He sees her sitting in the Hanged Man and more memories break free, suddenly, clamoring. Not the whole flood of them that had rushed in on him _that night,_ but enough to stagger him with recognition. "I...I remember you," he declares in wonder. "We played in our master's courtyard while Mother worked. You called me…"

She calls it now, the name he had strained to find behind the lyrium wall, and his memories lie silent. He cannot identify with this name, the name of the boy with the dog, and the cakes, and the banana trees. If this was also the name of the boy with the red-headed sister, perhaps he understands why Varania looks at him so sadly, for that boy is gone. He knows now: however many memories of Leto might return, in time or even all at once again, if he could bear the weight of them, he will never be that boy again. He is Fenris, even if he is still learning just _who_ that is.

And in that moment when Danarius saunters in, confident of a slave helpless in his trap, of course it is Hawke who reminds him, patient, gentle Hawke who has always seen past his walls, not to his lyrium-lost memories but to _who he is now_ , and never shied away from what she saw:

"Fenris doesn't belong to anyone."

* * *

Varania lives, and he can't stop thinking of her. It's not just the woman she has become, betraying her own brother for a chance at advancement: it's the memories. So many memories, continuing to trickle through the lyrium wall: red hair in pigtails, green eyes laughing at him or with him or _angry_ at him as sisters might have every right to be, small pale fists enforcing her demands on her little brother.

 _Little_ brother. That's how clear the memories have become: he remembers now that she was the eldest. Bossy and bewildering, always getting in the way of his boyish bravado and derring-do, but memory is a fickle thing and through the eyes of Fenris he notes now the bias of Leto's memories. He suspects that she loved him, in her way. He suspects that she grieved to lose him to the lyrium. He suspects that Fenris will never truly replace the Leto _she_ remembers. Perhaps that is why she was so ready to lose him to Danarius again.

A quiet sigh: Hawke shifts in the bed beside him, opening one eye to see him staring at the ceiling, wide awake as the memories roll in. It's not the first time she's seen him thus, since the rift between them was repaired. Never again has he faced the onslaught of memories that chased him from her in the first place, but the more he opens his heart to her, the more the lyrium wall crumbles, shaking at her touch. He remembers Varania more and more often since he saw her in the flesh, but memories of his mother return too. And of others, fellow slaves; and of rivals against whom he competed for the markings, before he realized what bearing them would mean. And even of Danarius, before the man remade him and gave him a new name.

"Bad dream?" Hawke whispers, leaning nearer to him.

"No," he assures her. "Only memories."

" _Good_ memories, I hope?"

"None of them," he says, glancing her way, "are so good as the ones _you_ have given me."

She finds his hand, slips her fingers in with his. He can bear it, he thinks, so long as she is beside him. Whatever memories may come, he welcomes learning more of who he was, but the urgency of that quest has faded as he discovers who he _is_.

Hawke was only half right. Fenris may not belong _to_ anyone. But he _belongs._ Here, at her side.

* * *

Author's note: I highly recommend checking out this story on my tumblr (rannadylin; use the My Stories link at the top of the blog to find this among the list of one-shots), where you can see the beautiful accompanying artwork created by beammetothemoon, and hear me read the story aloud!


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